Another pleasant witchy surprise on my re-reading journey with another witchy five-star read!

The plot in Wyrd Sisters is probably the tightest yet with Pratchett staying on point and developing each of the considerably-fewer-than-usual characters. I particularly love how the witches themselves are developing – Granny and Nanny are at opposite ends on the ignorance scale and both are equally hilarious.

Pratchett’s unique descriptions are still scattered throughout, some of them short and sweet:

The wind howled. Lightning stabbed at the earth erratically, like an inefficient assassin.

…and some of them deliciously two paragraphs long:

It was a rich and wonderful voice, with every diphthong gliding beautifully into place. It was a golden brown voice. If the Creator of the multiverse had a voice, it was a voice such as this. If it had a drawback, it was that it wasn’t a voice you could use, for example, for ordering coal. Coal ordered by this voice would become diamonds. It apparently belonged to a large fat man who had been badly savaged by a moustache. Pink veins made a map of quite a large city on his cheeks; his nose could have hidden successfully in a bowl of strawberries. He wore a ragged jerkin and holey tights with an aplomb that nearly convinced you that his velvet-and-vermine robes were in the wash just at the moment.

Plus the groundwork’s been laid for the magic swords and strawberry birthmarks to come…